Exotic Adventure

Ms. Spenser was off for the weekend, so I tried another experiment in watching lots of maybe-not-so-great movies. I'll be blogging them in pairs, matched thematically. First, old-fashioned exotic adventure.

Secret of the Incas (1954) is known mostly as the movie where Charlton Heston acts as the prototype for Indiana Jones. Harry Steele (Heston) wears a beat-up leather jacket and fedora, acting as a tour guide and amateur gigolo in Cuzco. He picks out middle-aged Glenda Farrell (or she picks him out) as his latest conquest. 

But is real passion is treasure hunting. He's looking for clues to the hiding place of the great Inca gold sunburst, working with local scuzzball Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life). Uncle Billy tells him of a new woman coming to town on a truck - that means she doesn't have any papers.

She turns out to be Nicole Maury, a Romanian refugee who is desperate to get to America. Since she doesn't have any money, you know how she's been paying her way. When Farrell comments that Heston is "changing horses in mid-stream", he grins at her and says, "Wouldn't you?" He is a cad.

The last act takes place in Machu Picchu, where we meet archeologist Robert Young, who is also taken with Maury. So Heston will have to steal the sunburst from under their noses. He knows where it is based on the old "light from a window reflected of the shiny thing placed in the secret spot" that Dr. Jones popularized. 

The movie also features vocal acrobat Yma Sumac both as a native servant and as singer on the soundtrack. That, plus the Cuzco and Machu Picchu locations would make this a great watch. But Heston is maybe too much of a heel to make it completely enjoyable.

The Indian Tomb (1959) is a Fritz Lang film, based on a book by his wife, Thea von Harbou. It is the sequel to Tigers of Enchnapur, which I couldn't find easily, so I skipped it. Prince Ramigani (Rene Deltgen) is in love with temple dancer Seetha (Debra Paget), who has run away with German engineer Paul Hubschmid. Deltgen wants him dead and her returned. 

While they are on the run, Deltgen's sister and her brother, another German engineer are brought in to build a tomb for the prince's lost love. When he finds out that she's not dead, just lost, and that she hates him, he wants out. But they are held captive.

The movie is filmed in India, including the water palace Jal Mahal. It's full of exotic locales and characters, but also (like Incas) a lot of brown face makeup. There are some tigers, but no tiger attacks (maybe in part 1?). Really, the biggest draw is Paget's extended dance sequence, where her costume is a strapless, backless bra and open-sided bikini. And it's not because she's a fabulous dancer. 

Both of these were more fun that I would have guessed, which is good enough for a bachelor's weekend.

Prog-Rock Destroyer

Jonah Ray Rodrigues is back in another horror flick: Destroy All Neighbors (2024).

He plays a prog-rock musician who is toiling over a planned record in the bedroom studio of his crappy apartment. but his loud new neighbor is destroying his concentration, playing EDM, banging on the walls and screaming. Rodrigues doesn't want a confrontation, but he finally pounds (taps) on the wall. His neighbor shuts up, but appears at the door - we see him through the peephole. He's a hideous troll-like old man, who hawks a loogie on the door. Under all the makeup, he's played by Alex Winter.

Jonah calls the police, but when they show up they find the neighbor having tea with Jonah's girlfriend. He has come over to apologize, and is charming to everyone. He promises to keep the music down, but behind everyone's back, gives Jonah the throat cutting gesture.

Jonah's day job is as studio engineer. He gets harassed in the parking lot by a drunk, and harassed in the studio by the musician he's working with, who gets him fired. When he comes home to Winter blasting the EDM, he finally works up the nerve to go over and confront him. Winter mocks him, tries to get him to dance, tries to get him to fight, and in the confusion, beheads himself. Cue Jonah going to YouTube - "How to get rid of a body." He winds up with a dismembered corpse, who unfortunately comes to life.

And this isn't the last body he will wind up with - all of them mysteriously re-animated. 

Rodrigues is kind of playing his usual nerdy character, but a little more spineless, a little less self-aware. He is obsessed with a prog-rock Youtube bass player, who advises that if people like and understand your music, you're doing it wrong. He has nothing but contempt and pity for anything non-prog. It's a little frustrating at first, because he's so unlikable, but then the killing starts. 

Not the scariest or funniest horror-comedy we've seen, but a fun low-budget B-movie. 

Who You Gonna Call This Time?

We didn't watch Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) because we're completists, or to make fun of it. We kind of liked Afterlife, and we kind of liked this one.

So the whole kid Ghostbusters family has moved to New York, to the old fire station. There are ghosts to be busted, and they mount up ECTO-1 pretty early on. But William Atherton, the EPA guy from the first movie, is now mayor of New York, and he wants these Ghostbusters shut down! Especially because McKenna Grace, on gunner seat, is fourteen, clearly underaged. So her mom, Carrie Coon, drops her from the team. Paul Rudd, not her dad, just mom's boyfriend, is sympathetic, but supports Coon.

While everyone is out on a bust, she sulks in Central Park, and sits down at a chess board. Sixteen-year-old ghost Emily Alyn Lind shows up to insult her and beat her at chess. Grace clearly becomes infatuated. This live/dead underaged lesbian romance drives the plot.

The original Ghostbusters are also on the job: Ernie Hudson is a philanthropist businessman who funds the operation. Bill Murray still runs a curio shop. And Dan Akroyd, with the help of Podcast (Logan Kim), collects possibly dangerous magical objects. Kumail Nanjiani sells them an orb he got from his deceased mother. With the help of Patton Oswalt, they determine it's an... Oh, never mind. It's a ghost McGuffin.

And of course, the ectotrap still hasn't been emptied, and is getting kind of overstuffed. Maybe Atherton was right. 

I'll say right off that I didn't love the whole thing with Paul Rudd trying to not try to be a dad to Coons' kids - he's still just a boyfriend. Probably pretty relatable to many, but kind of boring. I loved seeing Ernie Hudson getting some respect and some screen time. And all the running around, chasing ghosts, pursuing secrets, etc., while not really worth writing about was fun to watch. And of course, it was great to see Akroyd and Murray, and new guys Nanjiani and Oswalt, doing their stuff. 

Jason Reitman passed the director's role to Gil Kenan, and there were no more Ramis appearances. So I think this franchise can go on as long as people keep watching. I expect we will. 

Stormy

Ms. Spenser asked me to put on Creation of the Gods: Kingdom of Storms (2023). Not because she wanted to watch it - she just wanted something not too distracting to put on in the background while she worked. It's one of those amazing tales of the ancient Chinese empires. Because it isn't in English (subs over dubs!), it doesn't distract her much.

It is set in the Shang dynasty, one of the oldest. It starts with Prince Fei Xiang leading an army against a rebel king. One of the rebel's sons, who has been a hostage of the emperor, pleads with him to surrender, but is met with arrows. To show his dedication to the empire, he attempts to kill himself in front of his rebel father. But Fie Xiang has to help him through it, with foster-fatherly care. 

It seems that choosing between loyalty to family versus loyalty to the empire will be a big theme here. 

The rest of the movie is a little vague in my mind. Kings and hostages are killed, and war and suffering fill the land. Some immortals come from the Kunlun paradise, including a warrior, a sage and a little kid who is surrounded by a decorative ribbon, which he can also use a weapon. There is a seductive fox demon. There is palace intrigue, prophecies and weighty philosophical issues.  It's all a bit hazy.

That's partly because I was just reveling in the cool sets and costumes. Everything is richly ornamented and beautifully filmed. Even Ms. Spenser looked up now and then and said she might want to actually watch this sometime.

Since it's the first of a planned trilogy, we might get to see more. 

Minus Nothing

After the latest American kaiju offering, we were psyched for Godzilla Minus One (2023). It's a Japanese mid-budget movie with a lot of buzz. It was hard to get to see for a while in the US, presumably to give the domestic product a chance.

It starts during WWII. A kamikaze plane makes an emergency landing on a Pacific island. Munetaka Aoki, the head mechanic, figures that the pilot, Ryunosuke Kamiki, is faking a mechanical issue to get out of his mission. He tacitly approves. But when a giant lizard attacks the island, Kamiki has a chance to use his plane's machine on the monster, but freezes. When the fight is over, only Kamiki and Aoki are still alive, and Aoki blames Kamiki.

When the war is over, Kamiki goes home to Tokyo. He finds only rubble where is old house was. His parents are dead. A woman who was his neighbor gives him the news, then remembers he was supposed to be a kamikaze pilot. Now she blames him for not doing his duty and dying in battle to protect Japan. 

He runs into a young woman, Minami Hanabe, with a baby. He tries to get rid of them, but she follows him back to his spot in the ruins, and refuses to leave. She knows he can't leave them to die. The hostile neighbor eventually comes by to show them how to take care of the baby, both scornfully and tenderly. 

He gets a job clearing mines from the harbor. It pays well because of the danger. His crewmates include naval scientist and a man too young to have fought in the war. When he says he wished it lasted longer so that he could have fought, Kamiki sees red. But when Godzilla shows up again, now much bigger and with atomic heat breath, they are going to have to help take him down.

The first part of the movie is almost a simple Japanese post-war drama, with the Godzilla attack as just one other terrible thing along with the war, the fire-bombing of Tokyo and everything. Kamiki suffers from PTSD and survivor's guilt. Although people keep telling him to come back alive, when he does he is ashamed. He wants to help Hanabe and the baby, although he isn't in love with Hanabe, and the baby isn't his, or even hers. He's mostly good at his job, but gets very twitchy when faced with danger. 

The last part is almost all a modern action movie attack on Godzilla. Here, Godzilla is a horrifying force of nature, earthquake and volcano combined. But our scientist has a plan to stop him. Kamiki will fly a prototype jet fighter to distract or lure the monster. He even gets the mechanic Aoki to help - and so he can partially atone. He doesn't tell the scientist, but they plan for him to kamikaze into Godzilla if nothing else works. 

And I'll put in a SPOILER. Japan has finally gotten around to building ejector seats into their planes. He does come back alive.

The combination of a sensitive post-war drama and action monster movie is really incongruous. Post-war Tokyo is filmed really well, and so are the monster scenes, especially at sea. There's a black-and-white version, and we really want to see that too.

Gentlemen Don't Open Each Other's Mail

I was looking forward to The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) as a classic stupid action movie. But was it stupid enough or too stupid?

It starts with two men in a sailboat being stopped by Nazis. Beefy Henry Cavill and beefier Alan Ritchson claim to be Swedes on a sailing holiday. When the Nazis start to get heavy, they start goofing. "I'll give you 100 francs to kill that man." "Oh, no, don't kill me! I've been a naughty boy." Just being silly drunks, with broad Swedish accents. But when the Nazis discover Henry Golding below decks, gunfire breaks out, ending with all Nazis aboard dead. That would leave the Nazis on the cruiser nearby, but diver and demo expert Hero Fiennes Tiffin has just gotten back from putting a bomb on the side. So far, so successful.

Back in England, we see Cavill getting their assignment from Cary Elwes and Winston Churchill, Rory Kinnear. They are to go to the African island of Fernando Po, and destroy the ship the Nazis are using to supply their subs. They will be aided by sexy Eiza Gonzalez and Babs Olusanmokun, who runs a popular nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca. 

First, they need their buddy Alex Pettyfer, who is being held by the Nazis on a neighboring island. With 60 soldiers guarding him, that will only be about 15 a piece for our gang. Easy peasy.

You see, these guys are hard core. Ritchson, in particular, plays a Danish wildman, skilled at hunting and tracking, and killing silently with bow. It's funny seeing someone who's so buff that he makes Cavill seem slender. And they are loosely based on real people, the early secret agents who inspired Ian Fleming to write James Bond. In fact, Fleming himself is present, played by Freddie Fox. 

But sadly, movie is never as good as the goofball set piece at the beginning. They pretend to be Swedish sailors again when when an Allied ship stops them, but they just cop to being English right away. Since this is directed by Guy Ritchie, we hoped for more humor.

But Ms. Spenser, who is usually neutral on action movies, did ask to see that first scene again when we finished. Since they used it in the trailer, I assume they knew what they had.

X = ?

In preperation for watching Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire (2024), I rewatched Kong: Skull Island. It's funny how far the franchise has moved. K:SI is, among other things, a re-imagining of the King Kong story as an Apocalypse Now flavored Vietnam meditation. The later movies, much less.

GxK catches us up with the state of the monsters. Godzilla stomped a bit of Rome, but is curled up asleep like a cat in the Colosseum. Deep beneath the Earth, Kong is feeling a bit melancholy - and has a bad toothache. In the Hollow Earth observation station, scientist Rebecca Hall calls in rogue veterinarian "Trapper", Dan Stevens. He's the type to swing from a copter to lasso the infected fang and yank it out. Sort of an Indiana Jones type, or maybe a parody thereof. It's hard to tell if he's comic relief or not. 

But scientists are picking up an odd signal, and so is Kaylee Hottle, the deaf girl who is the last of the Iwi tribe of Skull Island. So, with the help of conspiracy podcaster Brian Tyree Henry, they head to the underworld to see what's what.

Among other things, Kong picks up a little friend, a mini-Kong. Although Kong is the last of his species, there are some other giant apes around (these guys look more like orangutans). They are enslaved by an evil king ape, and also kept locked up in a special area of the Hollow Earth, along with a tribe of Iwi. Hottle finds out that her new family have been broadcasting a warning, one that will take Kong and maybe even Godzilla as well, to combat.

Unlike Skull Island, this is a very modern movie. Lots of exposition is done via cable news, Henry's modern comic relief, etc. It's nice to see Mothra brought in to mediate between Kong and Godzilla, and Hottle is a lovely presence. Mini-Kong is sort of mixed - Kong tries to treat him as a protege, but he's a little shit (of a giant ape). I guess he had a lot of trauma. 

In connclusion, I'd say not enough Godzilla, Kong was too mopey, and Mini-Kong too much of a brat. When do we get Godzuki?

Also, did I miss the movie where Godzilla defeated Mecha-Godzilla? Or did it just run off of my mind like water off a duck?

Dislodged

Ms. Spenser asked for a spooky movie, and I had The Lodgers (2017) in one of my watchlists. It seemed perfect: a spooky house, old-timey setting, some mysterious monsters... Well.

Twins Charlotte Vega and Bill Milner live alone in an old run-down mansion. We learn through a nursery rhyme that the three rules of their lives are: Never leave the house after midnight, never admit a stranger to the house, and never leave each other alone. But Vega is clearly chafing at these restrictions. She stays out late and gets chased home by vague creatures. Milner is more timid, also pale, neurotic and neurasthenic. He begs Vega to be careful, to follow the rules, and not leave him alone.

When Vega goes into town, the rough men there bully her, but one-legged war veteran Eugene Simon comes to save her, and they begin to become close. She begins to hope that he will take her away from the cursed house. 

Since we find out early on that their parents were twins as well, and killed themselves, it's pretty easy to guess the nature of the curse. 

The monsters, or "lodgers" who enforce the curse are a little less clear. There is a bit of oily fluid that drips upwards, and some glimpses of bony monsters. I don't actually see them lodging much, but maybe I just don't get it.

Also, I fell asleep. This happens a lot, so it's really no judgement on the movie. But it did move pretty slow. Ms. Spenser reported that the ending was icky and disgusting, and not in a good way. It did have a nice atmosphere of corruption, but that was about it. big disappointment.